The U.S. government-sanctioned organization that oversees the Internet’s key “telephone book” defended its work Friday as diplomats and computer companies considered a greater role for the UN.
Paul Twomey, chief executive of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, said the organization is trying to modernize and allow participation from other countries.
About 200 diplomats, activists and companies including Hewlett-Packard and Cisco met last week in New York to discuss whether the UN should help oversee security, copyright law, technical standards and business disputes involving the Internet.
ICANN critics have complained that the organization is slow in making decisions and too close to the U.S. government, which funded the Internet’s early development through the 1970s and ’80s.
ICANN’s authority, granted by the U.S. government in 1998, formally covers the Internet addressing system but extends to related trademark disputes and security of the Internet’s core directories. ICANN chooses the organizations and companies that operate the directories for the various domain-name suffixes such as “.com” and “.fr.”
